Pay the licensing fees required to use the JPEG encryption/decryption algorithms

Nobody is keeping you from learning the file format on your own, and I'm sure there are at least some sources of information on it on the web, but it is quite complicated, and takes a lot of processing power to uncompress, so I wouldn't recommend it.

However, I think that if you were to use JPEG files in a commercial game you would stand to get sued for copyright infringment or something. But nobody is gonna sue you if it's just to learn (which I think it is).

I don't believe that the .jpeg format requires licesing fees... Thats the .gif format you're thinking of. Anyway there is something called jpeglib written the the JPEG group that will do decompression for you. I suggest searching for that if you need to load .jpeg files.

I believe Torval is right. GIF is the one that costs money. After a while, the guys that made it decided that they would start charging for it, hence the creation of PNG files (or so the story goes).

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Visit the homepage of my (soon to be 'net multiplayer) Tank Game at http://members.home.net/chris-man

Decrypting ANY file format is perfectly legal and free.

Its just the Encryption that costs money.
The .gif case has gotten rediculous now, because Unisys (is that the gif company?) is now trying to get royalties from anyone who even has one on their web pages.

Of course, this is illegal, and impossible to enforce anyway.

Is it legal to use .PNG files in commercial/non-commercial games?

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Drago

yeah, the GIF thing...

but JPEG comes from the same lovely people that brought you MPEG (motion picture expert group), so wouldnt it have some sorts of restrictions to using it?

oh well.. I still don't recommend using such file formats for games.

OK, you can't use GIF images in your game, that's a forgone conclusion, however, you can freely use JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) images freely and indeed the homepage actually has source (C/C++) for loading them. Sadly, I don't havea URL for it . However, the format is lossy so it's not a great choice anyway.

If you want to, you can freely use PNG and again, the homepage has source for loading them.(http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/).

in VB, you can load a jpg, gif or bmp image with the function loadlicture (in asycpict.dll)
how can i use it (in C,C++), with directX surface ?

How to load jpeg image to direct draw surface (in C, C++)

You could also have a look at:
http://developer.intel.com/vtune/perflibst/IJL/

It's a jpeg library with heaps of documentation.
Here's the blurb:

The Intel JPEG Library provides a set of highly optimized C functions that implement JPEG compression and decompression on Intel architecture
processors. You may use this library if you agree to all terms and conditions of the License Agreement.

regards,

martin